🔗 Share this article

What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate federal funds has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel congressionally authorized spending and attempting to move the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans be concerned who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ messaging could assist the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the attention of liberals nationwide. In part, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington create their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a longstanding feeling, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise following the state’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The California measure seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the vote is not in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a healthy political system will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to alter their respective maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more substantive, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a different country than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist